Wednesday, May 2, 2012

2012 tax season ends quietly

2012 tax season ends quietly

The 2011 filing season ended quietly, apart from a few IRS reminders and last-minute tips issued just before the April 17 deadline. Practitioners generally agreed with the government’s assessment that there were no big misfires this tax season. The IRS reported no problems with the processing of returns apart from a few delays in processing refunds in the early portion of the filing season. The delays resulted from improvements the IRS was making to its e-filing systems designed to prevent refund fraud. The IRS also continued to implement its Modernized e-File (MeF) program, which has been successful thus far.

On April 16, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George gave the IRS good marks for its performance during the 2012 filing season. Speaking with reporters, George said that the agency has worked diligently to detect tax fraud. However, George said that budgetary constraints have resulted in longer wait times for taxpayers to speak with IRS customer service representatives. George highlighted the IRS’s performance in a new report by TIGTA, “Interim Results of the 2012 Filing Season,” released on April 16.

If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose.